


The Embers of War Long Outlive the Flames

by treeflamingo



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2565704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treeflamingo/pseuds/treeflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's so much to rebuild after the defeat of Fire Lord Ozai, and not everyone rebuilds the same way.  OC-centric one-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Embers of War Long Outlive the Flames

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt “And they would rather write them off as evil than attempt to understand them. An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.” It is not very good, but frankly I'm proud of myself for having written anything at all. It's been a mighty long time. So, um, go me!

After the Fire Lord was defeated by Avatar Aang, Mari was, for the first time in her life, free to decide for herself what she wanted to do. Talented little firebenders were conscripted for military training even before they finished primary school. Perhaps there were some children out in the deep country who could bend fire but had not been turned into soldiers, perhaps some few children whose obscurity, whose overwhelming lack, shielded them from the Fire Lord’s view and ambitions. But for children like Mari, born in the capital, to a family of benders, who threw their first sparks before they spoke their first words, such escape was impossible.

Her education had begun and ended at the military academy. Ten years of books and drills, and she was officially a soldier. The Fire Lord said the lands they conquered were generally in chaos, or otherwise oppressed by corrupt leaders and smited by the darkness of their elements. FIrebenders were the keepers of light and the heat that powered civilization. They had a calling - a sacred duty - to liberate all other peoples from their ignorance, to unify them in the circle of hearth light that glowed forth from the magnificent furnace of the Fire Lord’s throne.

Mari believed this. She had written it for many, many test essays.

Would the peoples of Earth and Water wisely accept the rule of the Fire Nation? asked the tests.

Of course not. It’s in the nature of ignorance to hate the unknown and fear change.

And should force be used against resistors?

Of course it should. As a parent disciplines a child, so the Fire Nation must prove its power to the other peoples. Only through fear and defeat can ignorant peoples be taught respect and wisdom.

Mari had done superbly on her tests.

So when the Fire Lord was defeated, and the treacherous Prince Zuko crowned in his place, and all the world told her that she and her countrymen, her nigh-omnipotent leader, were villains and devils, Mari had a hard time accepting it. They told her that the Earth Kingdom was a place of great culture and ingenuity. The Water Tribes were brave and filial, and had a deep harmony with the sea. The exterminated Air Nomads had been a people of generosity and enlightenment. Mari simply couldn’t believe it. She had to find out for herself.

She packed her uniform in a quiet bundle, tucked it behind the pillow in the room her parents kept for her, put on plain dark clothes the color of ash, and set out on foot for the Earth Kingdom. 

The first village she came to was a shambles of cracked walls and dripping roofs. All the benders who would have carried out the repairs had been killed in battle. She lit a fire in the inn, to drive out the damp, and was driven out herself by a mob pelting stones with a furor that would have made their lost benders proud.

It was little different in the second village. By the fourth, she had learned not even to warm her own tea by hand, if she wanted to go undetected long enough to get a full night’s sleep. By the sixth village she had stopped talking to villagers; they could tell by her accent where she was from. She bought a dull green frock and wore it over her ashen trousers, a mud-brown belt cinching her waist.

“They’re all bloodthirsty and cruel,” it was said of her people. “They have nothing in their veins but fire.” “More devil than human. The Avatar should wipe them out.” “No heart, no conscience.” “No love for art or beauty.” “Ignorant, bestial, and dangerous like starved tigers.” 

“Perhaps not all of them wanted war,” she said once. “Perhaps not everyone knew why there was a war at all.”

Green and brown eyes slanted at her with deep suspicion. “No. They’re evil. All firebenders are evil. You love firebenders, stranger?”

“Not everyone from the Fire Nation is a firebender, not everyone - ”

“The whole Fire Nation made war on the whole Earth Kingdom. They made war on the whole world. All of them are the same.”

“I’m just saying, not all of them - ”

“Where’d you say you were from stranger?”

“...I was just leaving.”

In Ba Sing Se, she saw exquisite carvings of creatures and flowers cut into stones the size of pearls; slick and elaborate systems for transportation of goods and people; towering, incomprehensible mechanisms hewn out of rock and powered by precision bending. She saw the great and ancient palace. And she thought of all the torn and burnt villages, and all the people who lived in them who had called her own nation ignorant and animal.

Deep in the old heart of the city, by a deep well topped by a peaceful fountain, she found a tall shrine honoring the woman who had discovered the underground spring and created the fountain pool for her neighbors. It was evidently a feat of great skill and power. The spring, read the inscription, had been capped with two li of stone, and surrounded by tight-packed houses that would have toppled if the ground were cracked too quickly. That she had bent the earth so gently and particularly as to allow the water to spurt forth without causing fissures and quakes was a miracle for which she would be remembered gratefully by all the generations that came to her fountain. So read the inscription. At the very top of her shrine were twin lanterns, small and unlit, in the shape of twining spouts of water. The flame, had there been one, would have burned at the heart of the water spouts. A harmonious confluence of elements. Mari glanced around her, eyeing carefully the closed windows and darkened doors. It was dusk, dinner time, and not many people of the Earth Kingdom whiled away cheerful hours out of doors, as they used to. She was alone in the small square with the fountain. And when she was quite sure she would not be seen, she shot slim streams of flame to light the long-darkened lanterns, then ran.

At length she returned to her own nation, her own city, her own home and bedroom. She was welcomed and asked for stories, but she had none to tell. None she could bear telling. “A whole kingdom of people hates us,” was all she could think of to say, “and probably all the Water Tribes too.” It didn’t seem like a thing worth telling.

Instead she climbed the stairs to her room, took her quiet uniform from beneath her pillow, and carried it to the roof. Her family followed her, perplexed, noisy but not speaking. She heard their unformed questions, and hoped they would understand her answer. She spread the uniform out on the tiles. She examined its details and insignia. She formed in her hands the hottest flame she could hold. She burned the uniform, there on the roof, and let the ashes be carried away by the wind.


End file.
